Page 148 of Of Storm and Emerald
He was a prince, and his father was still the king, which meant he had to do as his king bid.
“Daemon, you and I both know that your father won’t let that happen.” She hung her head and sighed in defeat.
He pressed a finger beneath her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “Auraelia, let me help you. I can’t let you–”
She recoiled from his touch and took a step back. “Let me? I’m sorry,let me?” She took a deep breath in an attempt to calm the storm that raged inside of her before it flowed out and worsened the one that surrounded them. “Let’s get one thing straight. You do notlet medo anything. Everything I do, every choice that I make, ismydecision and mine alone. I may ask for advice, or for an opinion, but it stops there.”
Her body was shaking with anger, and she could feel the static that came before lightning pooled at her fingertips.
“My star, please.” His gaze softened, and he tried to reach out to her, but she stepped away. Her head shook back and forth as sorrow filled his eyes.
“I’m not ‘your star,’ Daemon–” She gestured to the storm that surrounded them both. “I am the storm that blocks out the sky and brings ships to their breaking point. I am the wind that tears their sails, and the sea that pulls them under…”
She paused as a moment of clarity shone through the turmoil in her mind. Her emeralds hadn’t been the only stone to funnel her magic that fateful day. The sapphire he’d given her shone just as brightly. And while she ripped through book after book in the council chambers, she’d stumbled upon her own family tree. Her father had been from the Sapphire Isles, and her lips tilted up into a small smirk at the realization.
“I am blessed bybothRhayne and Narissa, and I will bring this realm to its knees if that’s what it takes to keep my family and my people safe. And if you’re not with me, then you’re against me.”
Daemon shook his head, and let his arms drop to his sides. “I’m not against you, Auraelia…”
She took a few steps to close the gap between them and stared at him square in the eyes. “Then you’re in my way. You can’t help me, so move, or drown in the chaos. I no longer care.”
Auraelia brushed past him and headed back toward the castle. She’d only gotten a few steps away when Daemon grabbed her elbow and turned her to him.
“Don’t do this, please. Don’t sink to her level, don’t let vengeance drive you to be something you’re not.”
Auraelia pulled her arm out of his grasp, her eyes softening a fraction as she saw the tears that mingled with the rain that rolled down his cheeks.
“Everyone is the villain in someone else’s story. I will do what I must do to keep my people safe. If that makes me the villain, then so be it. Goodbye, Daemon.” She gave him a small, sad smile, then turned and continued on her way to the castle.
“Auraelia,” he called after her once more, and she stopped, but didn’t turn. “I love you.”
His words were a dagger to her chest, and it took everything she had not to run back into his arms.
To tell him she felt the same and that they could figure this out together.
But she couldn’t.
She knew that if she didn’t make him leave, he would stay, regardless of the repercussions. Knew that if their roles were reversed, she would do the same. But she refused to let Davina use him or his people as collateral damage when they had nothing to do with this war. Davina was already using them as pawns, and Auraelia wouldn’t play into her hands.
Instead, she turned her head to look over her shoulder and said the opposite of what she felt. The one thing that would crush them both.
“Don’t.”
She returned to the queen’s suite in the castle–since it was still under Xander’s shield–and was met with the mystified faces of Xander and Piper.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Xander asked, though he looked uncomfortable as he braced for the response.
Auraelia took a deep breath in and held it.
She let the bricks stack around her heart until they were so high that nothing, and no one, could get through. Then she reinforced it with her magic.
She let herself go numb.
Numb to the pain of her mother’s death.
Numb to the agony of cleaving her soul into pieces when she walked away from Daemon.
And finally, numb to the anger that still roiled inside at the knowledge that she would go to war over secrets that she was only discovering.
